Eline Vere

by Louis Couperus

  They went upstairs to his room. His suitcase was wide open, as was the wardrobe.

  ‘I’ll throw all the stuff I want to take on my bed, shall I, then you can put it in the suitcase.’

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘And you’re not angry with me any more, on account of that loan?’ he said in the wheedling voice of a spoilt child.

  ‘No, but you must pay Paul back when you see him tonight. I can help you out if you like, because I’ve got some extra money.’

  ‘You don’t have anything against Paul, do you?’

  ‘Oh no, not at all!’ she said. ‘Still, it’s better not to be in debt.’

  ‘But Freddie! He’s my best friend! I’m not afraid of owing him a little money.’

  ‘Indeed. He’s very kind, but the sensible thing to do is to pay him back, don’t you agree?’

  He agreed. Yet again she felt annoyed with herself. There she was, meddling in other people’s affairs again! They would both start hating her if she wasn’t careful. But Etienne did not hate her at all, on the contrary, he adored her for doing his packing for him.

  ‘There: shirts, collars, socks. Well, you can find the rest for yourself. I’ll go and look for Paul – at least, if you will advance me the money.’

  She was prepared for this, and reached into her pocket to hand him the required sum.

  ‘Thank you. We are leaving early in the morning, I gather. Oh yes, would you tell Willem to wake me up in good time? Bye for now.’

  He made to leave, but she took his head in her hands and kissed him.

  ‘I’m really glad you’re coming to De Horze with us. Mama will be thrilled. And so will Theodore, especially when he hears of your studious intentions,’ she concluded sweetly.

  He was delighted that they had made up, and a moment later she heard him whistling as he ran down the stairs.

  …

  The following evening Theodore van Erlevoort and Klaas the coachman drove to the railway station at Elzen to collect the party of visitors, and at about nine o’clock the old covered wagon rumbled up the oak-lined drive to De Horze. Marianne, who had returned from her final term at boarding school, came running to meet them, with Edmée and the two Van Stralenburg toddlers close at her heels. The little ones frolicked like young puppies, trying to keep up with the wagon amid shrieks of ‘Hello, Gran! Hello, Aunt Tilly! Hello, Aunt Freddie! Hello, Uncle Etienne!’ in complete disregard of Marianne’s frantic efforts to restrain them.

  Between the pillars of the veranda stood Truus beside Suzanne and her husband, Arnold van Stralenburg. After a grand, rattling sweep around the pond, the wagon drew up by the entrance to disgorge its passengers on all sides. For a few moments pandemonium reigned in the mêlée of happy reunion, with the children hugging and kissing everyone in sight and Theodore’s large hunting hounds barking and bumping the littlest ones off their feet.

  Madame van Erlevoort was the last to alight, and was promptly stormed by her high-spirited grandchildren, who squeezed past the long legs of their uncle from Zwolle to fling their short arms about her.

  Truus, Mathilda and Suzanne allowed the children to play for a while, but before long Miss Frantzen and the two other nursemaids came to fetch them. They were served sandwiches and then unceremoniously bundled off to bed. Mathilda went after them to make sure they were all well settled.

  They had not seen each other all winter, and the air was filled with questions to catch up on everybody’s news. Madame van Erlevoort glanced around, as though missing someone.

  ‘Where is Hetty? And where are the boys?’ she asked eagerly.

  ‘Still at school, Mama dear; the holidays haven’t started yet,’ replied Truus, smiling at her motherin-law’s disappointment.

  ‘Hetty is doing very well in Bonn; she writes long letters home. Cor was in Buenos Aires recently, with his ship.’

  ‘And Miss Voermans has left, hasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes she has; the dear old soul took her leave with tears in her eyes. But she was no longer needed, and we couldn’t afford to keep her on for old time’s sake, more’s the pity. Theodore is having trouble enough with his tenants as it is.’

  Overhearing this, Theodore assured them that he had no reason to complain, especially now that his dear kinfolk had arrived. ‘Why, Freddie! You look remarkably well! Prettier by the year! Look, Truus, what a fine-looking young lady she is! Wouldn’t you love to have a sister like that?’

  He placed his hands on her waist, displaying her to his wife, who responded with a warm smile.

  ‘And how is your heart faring? All well I hope?’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Anyone making it beat faster yet – pitter-patter, pitter-patter?’

  Freddie’s laugh was as clear as a bell.

  ‘Oh no, no one yet! Don’t fret, it won’t happen for a while.’

  ‘So you send all your suitors packing, do you?’

  ‘Oh yes, I keep them at a distance. A long distance!’ she chuckled. ‘I haven’t found anyone I care for, no one at all.’

  ‘Ooh, Little Miss Sharp!’ he retorted. ‘You’ll frighten them all away if you’re not careful.’

  She laughed more merrily than ever. How lovely she was when she laughed! She reminded him of the goddess Diana, a young, mocking Diana, lithe and strong with her proud head thrown back defiantly as she fixed him with her shining, challenging eyes. Despite her playful manner there was in her beauty a sense of truth and sincerity, a certain dignity telling him that she was not being coquettish, but that she possessed a sense of pride.

  ‘Ah, so that’s how you feel!’ he continued. ‘Well, I can’t say I’m sorry. It just goes to show that you have a sense of breeding.’

  And he looked at her once more, gratified to see in her a true Van Erlevoort.

  ‘And what do you think of Etienne?’ gushed Madame. ‘He has come to study for his exams!’

  ‘It is indeed a most pleasant surprise!’ said Theodore, bowing deeply.

  Frédérique began to laugh again.

  ‘Oh, he’s such a card!’ she said to Van Stralenburg. ‘Just imagine, Arnold, he very nearly forgot to take his study material! He turned up with a great stack of books at the very last minute, so there was some legal treatise or history book tucked away in almost every one of our suitcases!’

  ‘You can’t expect me to think of everything!’ said Etienne defensively.

  ‘No, of course not! You have so much on your mind already, don’t you?’ quipped Arnold, narrowing his eyes. ‘All that correspondence to see to, all those conferences and consultations!’

  He was in the habit of teasing his young brother-in-law at every opportunity, and Etienne was quick to rise to the bait, which often resulted in volleys of comic repartee followed by mock sparring matches.

  ‘Now, Arnold, don’t you start squabbling with Etienne!’ cried Suzanne. ‘Tell them to stop it, Mama, or they’ll be at each other’s throats again!’

  ‘Uncle Arnold and Etienne are always at each other’s throats!’ tittered Marianne.

  Arnold, however, declared that the sheer joy of this family reunion had completely undermined his combative spirit, and with a theatrical flourish, he spread his long arms to welcome Etienne. Locked in their embrace, they swayed from side to side a long moment until, without warning and utterly straight-faced, Etienne forcibly pushed Arnold’s head down and vaulted over his stooping frame. As though by design, without a word or the slightest hesitation, Arnold proceeded to vault over Etienne and vice versa, in a succession of leapfrogs provoking hilarity all around.

  ‘When they’re not at each other’s throats they’re just like clowns!’ shrieked Marianne. ‘Just like clowns!’

  …

  Frédérique and Marianne, who called each other by their first names despite being aunt and niece, shared a vast, high-ceilinged room, in which stood a monumental, old-fashioned oak bedstead with a dark-brown canopy. The doors were likewise made of oak, as was the wainscoting; the ceiling was decorated with a large medallion within
which disporting nymphs and cupids could still be faintly discerned.

  ‘I am so glad we’re sharing a room,’ said Marianne as they were getting ready for bed. ‘Oh, I couldn’t bear to sleep here alone! I’d be terrified, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I don’t expect so; I’m not that easily frightened,’ replied Freddie.

  ‘I think this room is awfully romantic, everything looks so ancient,’ said Marianne. ‘It’s easy to imagine yourself living in the Middle Ages, with all this dark panelling on the walls and the coats of arms over the doors.’

  Frédérique donned her nightgown and crawled into the four-poster bed.

  ‘It’s big enough to drown in!’ she laughed. ‘I’ve never slept here before.’

  Marianne, still dithering about in her bare feet, lifted the window-curtain a moment, letting a shaft of moonlight into the room.

  ‘Look, Freddie, how eerie! Don’t I look like a ghost in this light?’

  ‘Oh, Marianne, stop fussing, will you? Why don’t you come to bed, then we can have a nice gossip.’

  Marianne dropped the curtain, undressed hurriedly and nestled herself beside Freddie.

  ‘Good gracious! This bed is gigantic! Oh, I’d die if I had to sleep in it by myself. Don’t you think it’s scary? Not even a little?’

  ‘Of course not. It’s your imagination, that’s all.’

  ‘Yes, I’m always imagining things, such as seeing ghosts, or being in a haunted house, or other things like meeting a knight in shining armour. But you’re different, all cool and collected, so I don’t suppose you dream up all sorts of stories for yourself the way I do.’

  ‘Stories? No, no. What sort of stories?’

  ‘Oh, entire novels sometimes. Then I imagine that I am a noble damsel, and that the boys are my grooms and the little ones my pages. And then I fall in love with a knight, who wants me to elope with him because my father’s so cruel and bloodthirsty, and won’t have him for a son-in-law.’

  ‘What a flattering portrait of your papa!’ giggled Frédérique. ‘And what about your knight – is he dark or fair?’

  ‘That depends on my mood. I say, Freddie, have you ever been in love?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Truly not? I’ve fallen in love a dozen times already, but it never lasts very long with me, just three or four weeks at the most. In Bonn, for instance, I had a drawing master whom I adored. And then there was a young man – fair hair and blue eyes, he had – who used to bring me bonbons on the sly.’

  An elaborate enumeration of Marianne’s beaus followed.

  ‘But tell me, Marianne, how old are you now? Seventeen? Eighteen?’

  ‘I’m already eighteen!’

  ‘Goodness me!’ laughed Frédérique. ‘And your head is still full of ghosts and drawing masters! You’re as bad as Etienne, he never seems to grow up either.’

  Marianne took offence at this and began to shake Freddie, whose laughter only increased.

  ‘And what about you? You’ve never even been in love! How grownup is that?’

  ‘It’s time we went to sleep, Marianne. I wish you sweet dreams of a certain blue-eyed someone, then!’ laughed Freddie.

  Marianne soon drifted into sleep, with her head touching Freddie’s shoulder.

  Freddie lay awake for a long time; she had to smile at how childish Marianne seemed, despite being all of eighteen years old! She herself was twenty-three – quite a difference with Marianne there – and all that romantic fantasising about knights in armour and noble damsels was a thing of the past as far as she was concerned. But what kind of thoughts did she have nowadays? She often thought badly of herself, it was true – but who else did she think about? There was one person she thought about rather often, someone she wished were different in some ways, although in which ways she was not sure. So why did she think about him at all, if he was not as she would have liked him to be?

  ‘It’s so peculiar, so very peculiar,’ she murmured to herself. ‘Why I keep thinking of him is beyond me. It isn’t as if I want to think of him, I just can’t get him out of my mind.’

  She was tempted to drift off into some pleasant daydream, but checked herself, sensing the stirrings of pride in her heart. She had self-worth, Theodore had said; she had breeding! The person she kept thinking of did not deserve her wholehearted attention. He was – she could see it quite clearly now – unserious, and besides, he was egotistic, the sort of person who made himself popular with everyone.

  Theodore’s words had struck a chord, for there was in her character a trait that she had barely been conscious of before: a sense of pride, not merely pride in her high birth and her surname, but an innate pride inherited from noble forebears, which resonated in every nerve of her being. Yes indeed, she was proud, but that did not mean to say that she felt satisfied with herself. On the contrary! Oh, on the contrary!

  She lay awake for hours, staring at the faded nymphs and cupids on the ceiling with Marianne beside her, fast asleep, breathing softly and regularly like a child. Countless times she asked herself the unanswerable question: why did she keep thinking of Paul?

  …

  The following morning saw the arrival of Otto, who was to spend a week at De Horze before taking up his new position of steward to the royal estates. His appointment was in the environs of Elzen, and he would therefore be living fairly close by, a consoling thought to Madame van Erlevoort, who felt that the proximity of the happy household of De Horze might assist him in casting off his sorrows.

  Theodore was out for the day, taking Arnold van Stralenburg on a tour of the grounds, and Truus was busy in the house while the children played in the park and the gym room under the supervision of the nursemaids. Otto joined the ladies – Madame van Erlevoort, Mathilda, Suzanne, Frédérique and Marianne – on one of the spacious, creepered verandas.

  ‘How is Etienne getting on?’ he asked.

  Madame van Erlevoort beamed.

  ‘He got up early,’ said Freddie. ‘He made a tremendous to-do rearranging the furniture in his room when he arrived, to make himself a proper study, and he’s putting it to good use, as you see.’

  Marianne stood up.

  ‘Where are you off to, Marianne?’ Suzanne wanted to know.

  ‘I am going to my favourite little spot at the back of the park!’ she said. ‘Oh, Freddie, it’s so lovely there, full of lilies of the valley. Why don’t you come with me? Then I can tell you all about the book I’m reading: Ein Gebet, by Carmen Sylva – oh, it’s just wonderful!’

  Marianne left with Frédérique in tow, after which Otto and Suzanne set out for a stroll together. They had not seen each other for a long time, as Otto had gone to stay with his relatives in London the previous summer instead of coming to De Horze. Suzanne found him altered: he look older, and his face resembled a mask of quiet mourning, in which she detected a trace of bitterness.

  She took his arm, and wordlessly they wandered down the broad oak-lined avenue, shaded from the baking July sunshine by the lush foliage. Giant ferns spread their fans along the ditches all ashimmer with metallic hues, delicate spider webs festooned the bushes like filaments of silvery glass, and now and then, through a break in the trees, they glimpsed a weather-beaten statue on a pedestal, a Flora or Pomona velvety with moss. The sweet-smelling wild honeysuckle ran riot along the verges, flinging its tangled shoots in every direction, while the blossoming cow parsley raised its flat heads of white froth. Otto and Suzanne proceeded at a leisurely pace. Ahead of them, in the distance, they saw two small figures in light-coloured clothes plunging into the greenery: Frédérique and Marianne, bound for the lilies of the valley. At their back they heard peals of laughter from the children frolicking on a heap of sand in the shade of the big house.

  ‘How beautiful it is here!’ Suzanne said at length. ‘I am so glad Theodore is letting nature have its way in the park, even if it’s only for the sake of economy. It looks like a jungle! I can remember when I was little Papa had a whole regiment of groundsmen, and
the park always looked as tidy as a garden, with gazebos and vases and statues. And now it’s all tumbling down – some of the statues are broken, too. Oh, do you remember that time when you climbed on top of that nymph over there? You broke her arm, remember?’

  ‘So I did,’ said Otto.

  ‘Papa was furious! You were sent to your room and put on bread and water for three whole days, remember?’

  ‘Yes I do,’ said Otto, smiling.

  ‘And you refused to beg Papa’s pardon for answering back when he told you off, and then Mama insisted you should anyway. Remember?’

  He squeezed her arm gently in response, moved almost to tears. The remembrance of that summer in his boyhood evoked a whole train of associations with another summer, during which he had strolled in this very park not with Suzanne, but with …

  ‘I say, Otto!’ Suzanne said abruptly. ‘Won’t you be homesick for The Hague, living all by yourself in Elzen?’

  ‘Oh no!’ he exclaimed with feeling. ‘Not at all! I have no desire to be in The Hague.’

  She glanced at him, startled by his emotion.

  ‘Life in the country appeals to me, and I look forward to my new office,’ he added.

  ‘Is there any particular reason you want to leave The Hague?’ she asked softly.

  ‘A particular reason? No, none at all.’

  He seated himself on a park bench, but she remained standing, absently plucking sprays of blossom from the overhanging honeysuckle while she tried to find the words to continue.

  ‘Oh, Otto, it’s not on account of – on account of–?’ she faltered.

  He looked straight ahead a moment, then replied in a slow, dull voice.

  ‘My dear Suzanne, what are you thinking? That I want to leave The Hague because of Eline?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said timidly. She sat down beside him and began to arrange the flowers into a posy.

  ‘My dear Sis,’ he resumed, sounding as if he were reciting a rehearsed response, ‘whatever gave you that idea? Did you really think a fellow would spend the rest of his life mourning a girl who goes back on her word? Of course I was sorry at first, and I was sad, too. But it’s all over now, I assure you. Over and done with … one stops seeing the other person, gradually one stops thinking about them, and in due course one forgets. A broken heart never killed anyone in real life, and besides, a man’s heart does not break as easily as you might think: men have work to do, business to attend to, and life simply goes on, leaving them little time to ponder their losses, even if they wished to. It is different with women, I believe; they give in to their feelings more readily, don’t they?’